A first for The Prairie Urbanist, I am writing a series of articles “Not Just Zoning”” discussing one of the most consequential issues within our cities today: the housing affordability crisis. Though originally intended as a singular article, as I began to research and write I found it difficult to properly address this important issue with such brevity. Section 1 of 4 will introduce the motivations of this series and provide a review of academic literature regarding housing markets and supply-side reforms.
Introduction: the Death of Econ 101
In an article for Current Affairs, the behavioral economist Dr. Cahal Moran describes a phenomenon termed “the death of Econ 101” in which basic economic theories like the laws of supply and demand are given undue reverence within public political discussions that is not reflected in empirical academic literature.
“There is also a widespread notion that economics restricts the scope of policy discussion and that those who recommend policies outside this scope can safely be disregarded…. This idea of ‘economics’ is based on a surface-level understanding of old introductory models that have since been contradicted by empirical evidence. The notion that economics confers hard limits on what we can and cannot do politically often draws from introductory or ‘Economics 101’ classes…. Over the past few decades, it has been shown that the standard ‘econ 101’ story is misleading at best and flatly contradicted by the evidence at worst.” (Moran, 2022).
As a case study, Dr. Moran uses the disconnect between the widespread argument within political debates that minimum wage laws increase unemployment and the reality that recent research within the field of economics has repeatedly demonstrated little to no effect of minimum wage increases on unemployment. The political debates against minimum wage policies all relied on a basic interpretation of supply and demand. Those three words, supply and demand, immediately left me thinking– to what degree is the conversation regarding the housing affordability crisis and zoning reform infected with this same “death of Econ 101” tendency?
Anyone who spends time in pop-urbanist online spaces or follows urban planning policy debates will hear a loudening call for zoning reform and development deregulation to “unlock” housing production to lower prices justified by an appeal to the law of supply and demand. This call for reform is not bound by usual political party or regional dynamics. In this year alone, democrats in California loosened the state’s environmental laws for housing production, increasing housing supply was a key issue in New York City’s mayoral primary, meanwhile republicans in Montana enacted laws requiring cities to relax zoning and permitting. The debate on housing took a new, mutated form with the release of journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance, which reinvents Third Way politics to argue that the democratic party must embrace “supply-side progressivism” for its very survival. Skepticism of private development no longer makes you just a NIMBY, but an enabler of the quasi-fascist Republican party.
It is undeniable that there is a housing affordability crisis and that our zoning regimes often result in undesirable urban forms. Yet, in the last few years of writing about urbanism and preparing for graduate school, I have become more and more uncomfortable with the common narratives around the housing crisis and the increasingly broad political aims introduced by the Abundance agenda. (I want better, equitable cities, not continued environmental degradation). I embarrassingly realized my own understanding of housing markets, upzoning, and permitting deregulation were more informed by pop-urbanism books, YouTube, Substack blogs, and— yes– rudimentary “101” economics than I should readily admit as a prospective planning student.
With the “death of Econ 101” in mind, I endeavored to see what the academic literature from planning, urban studies, and urban economics journals has to say regarding housing markets and zoning reforms. Thus, in this series I will argue the following with each section:
- Housing markets and housing unaffordability are more complicated than portrayed in pop-urbanism and political discussions. In particular, the distinction between housing costs and land values are overlooked. While supply and demand play a role in housing costs, the size of their role is often difficult to estimate and subject to other factors. As such, deregulatory reforms targeted at increasing housing production by the private market will not be a “silver bullet” for solving housing affordability. Private development is unlikely to produce the housing supply necessary to improve affordability for everyone.
- The focus on zoning and permitting reform often overlooks or enables the negative externalities of private development, such as displacement. We should be skeptical of some proposed reforms. Further, other contributing factors to housing unaffordability continue unabated: surging land values, financialization and commodification, wealth inequality, and lack of investment in public housing and services.
- Zoning and regulatory reforms are good and mandatory for reasons beyond housing affordability. Building is often unnecessarily difficult and regulatory improvements will benefit non-market actors. Hitching zoning reform and urbanism on housing affordability endangers community backlash if the reforms do not result in improved costs and negative externalities are ignored.
- Not just zoning. Potential solutions beyond private market housing production fall into three main areas. First, somehow inducing disruptions to the housing market that result in significant reductions in land values (undesirable). Second, sustained improvements in average wages and employment opportunities. Third, non-market programs or interventionist policies.
A mild disclaimer, or two. First, this series is not to oppose increasing housing production or zoning reforms. Section 3 will provide further discussion of this point. Next, I am a layperson preparing for urban planning graduate school, not an economist, housing professional, or academic. I will certainly miss some concepts and fall short of a truly rigorous analysis. My goal is to explore and develop my thinking beyond the usual conversations you find in online debates, blog postings, and popular media.
SECTION 1: HOUSING MARKETS, SUPPLY AND DEMAND
The mostly online “pop urbanism” community initially began with a focus on urban design, walkability, and public transportation. Works such as Happy City or Suburban Nation energized subreddits, blogs, and eventually Youtubers like City Beautiful and the insufferably hollandophile Not Just Bikes (from whom the title of this series is shamelessly lifted). Bashing poor zoning regimes and NIMBYs was always part of the game, but soon the ascendant, political YIMBY movement, which incorporated urbanist trappings with a laissez-faire attitude towards housing production, began to dominate popular discussions of cities. The movement and its concurrent political groups continue to win victories in cities and state legislatures, with debates presently focusing on California’s SB 79 to upzone transit areas.
The Pew Research Center reports that 69% of US adults are “very concerned” about housing costs, showing the ample base from which the YIMBY movement is able to draw. The movement is often presented as a “big tent” that is open to all political persuasions, yet there is a rigid free market ideology underpinning its logic. This is especially apparent in the wake of the aforementioned Abundance narrative, which offers YIMBYism as a new third way for hegemonic Neoliberalism to combat right-wing populism. The basic YIMBY argument regarding housing, as found in The YIMBY Manifesto substack, is as follows:
- There is a significant shortage of homes within American cities causing high housing costs.
- The shortage is a result of decades of underbuilding caused by restrictive zoning codes, burdensome permitting processes, and local opposition to development (NIMBYs).
- If zoning controls are removed and permitting processes are reformed, private market housing production will increase the supply of homes in high-demand cities. Housing costs would fall in response to filtering and the laws of supply and demand.
This is a clear appeal that a freer private market could solve housing affordability underwritten by basic economic concepts (“Econ 101”). Such notions have become doctrinal and rigid within pop-urbanist and YIMBY spaces. In a rhetorically messy video by the urbanist Youtuber Oh the Urbanity!, a critical eye towards private development’s ability to provide affordable housing is framed as economically illiterate and should be condemned as left-NIMBYism. A particularly triumphant article by the substack-based magazine The Argument declared that YIMBY had already conquered the intellectual and political debates, only the courts remained.
“The intellectual fight over liberalizing land-use regulations is over. The YIMBYs have won. Almost all economists and legal scholars agree that land-use regulations have played a central role in creating a housing crisis, slowing economic growth and increasing economic inequality without producing sufficient benefits” (David Schleicher, 2025).
Death of Econ 101 strikes again. A review of academic literature regarding housing markets and land use controls presents a much more complex and openly debated story than YIMBYism broadly portrays. Above all, even literature sympathetic to supply-side solutions cautions that housing will likely remain unaffordable for lower-income residents without intervention. Thus, private housing production is not the “silver bullet” promised by YIMBYism and the Abundance political messaging.
“I’m Not Like Other Markets”
As described above, popular discussion of housing affordability is dependent on appeals to basic conceptions of supply and demand. Under this argument, housing prices occur at the market equilibrium between the quantity of housing supplied and the quantity demanded by those looking to purchase housing.
If housing demand rises above the housing quantity supplied, prices increase. Hence, the current trend of historically high home prices is seen as an indicator of a housing shortage. Though the existence of a housing shortage is undeniable (Airgood-Obrycki & McCue, 2025; Freemark, 2025), several characteristics of housing markets make this sort of basic supply and demand analysis less useful than it is for basic goods such as vegetables. I want to briefly discuss some of these characteristics, which are important to keep in mind as we review academic literature deeper in this series.
- Housing is a constant, basic human need.
- Housing is difficult and time consuming to produce, value, and purchase.
- Housing markets are segmented and contain many submarkets.
- Housing is distinct from, but related to land and land values. Landownership imparts a natural monopoly.
Housing, as durable shelter, is a basic need for all people. Unlike other fundamental needs like education or water, the private market is the overwhelming provider of housing in the United States, with 1 million households (out of 133 million) residing in public housing (HUD, 2025). This is particularly remarkable given that the home, like public education, is a key venue of social reproduction. Hence, housing is a clear, constant priority for people in a way that other goods sold on markets are not— impacting the elasticity of demand within housing markets. One can choose not to purchase a piece of furniture or a consumer electronic when discontented with the market, yet housing not so much. Rational choice (another flawed “Econ 101” concept) within the market is challenged.
Markets for housing present further challenges in contrast to other goods on both sides of supply and demand. Houses are not easily tradable, reducing market feedback. The act of purchasing or selling a house is legally complex and costly in time as it requires real estate agents, title work, and mortgages. Even renting requires leases, deposits, and sometimes brokers. On the supply side, producing houses (regardless of permitting difficulty) requires substantial time, materials, and labor. Houses are almost always fixed in location, preventing transport to markets that are more favorable or enduring shortages. All these characteristics alter the ability for housing markets to be priced and understood adequately.
An often overlooked, but conceptually important aspect of housing is that the housing market is segmented and contains submarkets (Been, et al, 2019). Popular discussion and even some academic literature displays a general tendency towards considering housing markets in aggregate and at regional (metropolitan) levels. However, as I will discuss in more detail later, submarkets and locations are vital for understanding housing prices, market dynamics, and policy effects (Damiano, 2025). Housing markets are segmented in many ways: renting vs owning, income level, built-form (detached, attached, apartment, etc), ownership form (cooperative, condominium, zero lot line), size, locational characteristics (urban, suburban, rural), and much more. This segmentation presents theoretical complications. How do we properly assign supply and demand curves? How do changes in one submarket impact others?
The final– and most important– element that is unique to housing is its relationship to the land it exists upon. Land values are distinct from, but related to housing prices (Ball, Shepherd, Wyatt, 2022). While nearly absent from popular discussion of the housing affordability crisis, it is analytically consequential to recognize this distinction. Not only is there a market with supply and demand for housing, but also a separate yet interdependent market for developable land with its own considerations of supply and demand. Lastly, land is analytically important for discussing housing costs because landownership (as any Georgist will tell you) imparts a natural monopoly. Land is locationally fixed, unique, and cannot be reproduced or created. Any monopoly is exploitable for economic rent-seeking, which is the unproductive accumulation of wealth.
To summarize, when considering the housing market it is useful to keep in mind that (despite existing in a market) housing is a basic human need fundamental to social reproduction. Housing is not easily traded, nor produced and is segmented into many submarkets. Land is distinct from, but related to housing and imparts an exploitable natural monopoly to its owners.
With that said, let’s move to the promised review of the academic literature.
Zoning Reform, Supply, and Housing Affordability
Particularly informative for understanding the state of academic research regarding zoning reforms, supply, and housing prices is a series of articles recently published in the journal Housing Policy Debate. The series began with reviews sympathetic to supply-side solutions (Been, Ellen, & O’Regan, 2025; Been, et al, 2019) and garnered several instructive responses (Helm & Murray, 2025; Damiano, 2025). These articles demonstrate that while stimulation of supply via private development can beneficially affect housing costs in aggregate, the impact of zoning reforms on localized areas, filtering, and submarkets are more complicated and unclear.
The strongest empirical support for new housing supply favorably impacting housing costs tends to be from measuring the changes in median rents in the response to supply increases at the citywide or regional level. Been, et al (2025) reviews a study that finds regional upzoning in Auckland, New Zealand resulted in increased housing construction and moderated rents below a model control market (Greenaway-McGrevy & Phillips, 2023). In a review of literature regarding the impacts of zoning changes, Freemark (2023) cites several studies demonstrating similar moderation of rents at citywide levels (Anagol et al, 2022) and across regions (Buechler & Lutz, 2021). It is important to note that much of this literature is examining rental prices, not home prices, and is using controls that project rental increases if no zoning or supply change occurred. Helm and Murray (2025) questions the ability for this common approach to properly account for shifts in demand (as opposed to supply) and long-term trends.
When analysis turns to localized impacts of zoning reform and private market supply, the research tends to find unclear or mixed results for neighborhoods, individual lots, and housing submarkets. Li (2022) finds new private market development for the years 2000 to 2010 in Manhattan moderated rents for middle to upper rent segments, but not for lower rent buildings. Chicago’s upzonings near transit in 2013 and 2015 caused localized land value increases while production of new supply was absent over five years later (Freemark, 2019). In contrast to YIMBY fanfare regarding Minneapolis’ major zoning reforms under the city’s Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan, Damiano and Frenier (2020) reports that new private market development in Minneapolis reduced prices in high-rent neighborhoods, while noticeably increasing prices in low-rent neighborhoods. Damiano (2025) strengthens this prior finding and Kuhlman (2021) suggests that Minneapolis’ upzoning raised single-family home prices by 3% to 5% above surrounding cities, with higher impacts in lower cost neighborhoods. The much praised citywide moderation in median rents likely masks localized and submarket effects— a clear equity concern.
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Under basic economic theory, the primary method by which housing becomes affordable to lower-income renters is through filtering. Over time wealthy residents will move into newer units, freeing up their older units for others causing a chain reaction across market segments. This is a widely held notion in YIMBY spaces and policy lobbying. While ample literature supports this general idea of filtering (Rosethal, 2014; Mast, 2023; Bratu et al, 2023), other articles suggest complications and divergence of trends (Turner & Wessel, 2019; Liu et al, 2022; Spader, 2025). Observing housing trends from 1985 to 2021, Spader (2025) finds that filtering rates are dependent on changes in market conditions and have significantly slowed since 2015, especially for lowest income households. Filtering can be complicated by new units being absorbed by households that do not leave behind a unit accessible to the market, such as migration from outside the market, or renters who moved out of parents’ homes (Turner & Wessel, 2019).
Whether one believes the findings of the individual articles above are convincing or not, it is clear that academic literature broadly paints a more complicated picture of zoning reform, private market supply, and housing affordability than the simplistic economic assumptions held in popular discussions. Rather than zoning reforms predictably impacting supply and demand curves, attempts to model reform impacts are far more complex as shown in the figure below.
The series of responses in Housing Policy debate demonstrate that the intellectual debate is far from settled (apologies to The Argument) and there is still much that is not clearly understood.
“—but scholars cannot yet definitively answer which specific elements of the market or zoning code produce which outcomes. Though recent research leverages convincing causal methods to make claims about the impacts of zoning change, there still may be unmeasured, endogenous conditions leading to rezonings that influence results” (Freemark, 2023, p. 12).
Recent statewide zoning reforms such as Colorado’s upzoning along transit routes and Arizona’s “middle housing” law (among other reforms in western states) provide ample opportunity in future years to study the comparative impacts of reforms both among cities within a state and across states and reform types. Hopefully, examining these changes will help illuminate localized vs regional effects, and help planners identify the best contextual applications of various reforms.
Why the focus on zoning and regulatory reform?
As is clear from pop-urbanism, public policy debates, and the review of recent literature so far, zoning reform is a primary consideration of housing discussions. It is worthwhile to examine the academic genesis of this focus.
The most influential strain of research connecting zoning and other planning controls (permitting regulations, etc.) to housing prices is the decades-long work of economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko. The Ivy League pair are known for conceptualizing planning controls as a “regulatory tax” that inflates home prices (2002; 2003; 2005) and for arguing some of the broader economic implications of planning regulations and housing shortages (2018). As such, this literature naturally lends itself for support of loosening of planning controls and zoning reform.
After reading several articles by Glaeser and Gyourko, I would summarize their basic arguments as follows:
- Historically, housing prices were primarily determined by local market characteristics of geography, material costs, and labor wages (2018). Economists traditionally attributed unusually high housing costs to high land costs (2002).
- Housing prices began to diverge from construction costs in the 1990s in high-regulation, high-productivity metro areas like New York and San Francisco, while prices remained near construction costs in lower regulation, but high demand cities in the sunbelt (2002; 2003; 2005; 2018).
- Construction costs do not vary significantly across US metros (2018). The lack of construction in heavily regulated, but high demand coastal cities demonstrates planning controls, not land values, contribute to high housing prices as a “regulatory tax” (2002; 2003; 2005; 2018).
- Beyond housing prices, the inability of high economic performance metros to accommodate housing production contributes to a misallocation of labor and dampens US economic growth. Eliminating planning controls would lead to higher GDP growth as people migrate to highly productive metros (2018).
There is value in Glaeser and Gyourko’s work– I think their repeated finding that construction costs do not vary significantly enough across cities to explain housing price differences is particularly interesting. In addition, Glaeser and Nathanson (2014) provides informative analysis of housing bubbles. However, the pair’s overall arguments contain several problematic assumptions that warrant scrutiny and undermine their hypothesis that planning controls— not land values— primarily drive housing prices. These assumptions are chiefly about measurements of land values and effects, the precise elements they are seeking to reject.
O’Flaherty (2003) and Murray (2020) critique Glaeser and Gyourko’s method of determining the “regulatory tax” of planning controls found in several of their articles mentioned above (2002; 2003; 2005). O’Flaherty (2003) argues that Glaeser and Gyourko’s statistical methods poorly measure amenities and location (potential drivers of land value) and that their theoretical assumptions of idealized unregulated markets are not observable in new neighborhoods over time. Acutely damaging to Glaeser and Gyourko arguments, Murray (2020) demonstrated that their model showed a high degree of “regulatory tax” on home prices in historical markets where no modern planning controls existed.
“In both cases, the method finds large ‘regulatory taxes’ of around 46% of land prices in colonial Australia, and 16–34% of land prices in ancient Mesopotamia, demonstrating that the location values that G&G [Glaeser & Gyourko] identify as a ‘regulatory tax’ are a timeless feature of land markets.” (Murray, 2020, p. 194)
Rather than measuring the impact of planning controls on price, Glaeser and Gyourko’s method likely represents the location value of land (Murray, 2020). This shortcoming of the method calls into doubt other findings reviewed in Been, et al (2019) and cited as evidence in favor of supply-side solutions.
Glaeser and Gyroku (2018) develops a different strategy for estimating the “regulatory tax” across US housing markets. Instead of the gap of marginal and average prices of housing lots used in Glaeser and Gyourko (2003), the new method looks at the gap between observed market prices and the minimum profitable cost of production for a house in an unregulated market (2018). Yet, the problematic treatment of land values persists:
“Vacant land sales are rarely observed in the United States, so to estimate the value of a price of land, we use an industry rule of thumb based on an ad hoc survey of home builders that land values are no more than 20 percent of the sum of physical construction costs plus land in a relatively free market with few restrictions on building.” (Glaeser & Gyourko, 2018, p. 8)
Beyond the clearly questionable decision to use a likely imprecise and untested industry rule of thumb rather than any academic source for land values, the assumption that land values would be consistent across any unregulated markets is only possible under the suggestion that planning controls are the main source of land values— rather than other locational effects or geographic constraints. The authors admit themselves that they ignored amenity differences in their analysis (Glaeser & Gyourko, 2018), despite literature consistently finding that amenities are a major factor in land values (Song, Zhou, Zhang, et al, 2022; Albouy, 2016; Diamond, 1980).
As discussed above, a key element of Glaeser and Gyourko’s general argument is that sunbelt cities (Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, etc.) feature high housing production and low prices due to their supposed low regulations (2018). A consequence of Glaeser and Gyourko’s theoretical treatments of land values is that the pair overlooks the alternative explanation that the availability of low-cost developable land on the urban periphery of sunbelt cities is responsible for the housing production and price effects, not planning controls (Rodríguez-Pose & Storper, 2020). Glaeser and Gyourko (2025) finds that housing production in the sunbelt is falling and prices are increasing akin to the trends observed in coastal markets beginning the 1990s. Though the authors still avoid discussing land values and the availability of developable land (instead arguing regulations become more important as markets mature), I believe this emerging trend self-evidently contradicts their longheld notions of planning controls and price effects.
The continued theoretical and modelling trouble with the distinction between land values and housing prices shown in Glaeser and Gyourko is reflected in popular discussion of housing markets and zoning reform. Clarity will be needed to address housing affordability as high land values suggest far different policy solutions than deregulation of planning controls. Housing affordability is increasingly an universal crisis across highly-developed countries, despite heterogeneity in planning systems. More skepticism is warranted towards attempts to quantify the “regulatory tax” of planning controls.
Will the private market alone meaningfully solve housing affordability?
No.
There is a clear consensus in the academic literature that reform of planning controls and private market housing production is unlikely to improve affordability for lower income households (Rodriguez-Pose & Storper, 2020; Freemark, 2023; Been, et al, 2025; Damiano, 2025; Louie, et al, 2025).
“it is clear that increases in high-end housing supply and zoning changes are necessary incremental improvements over the status quo but nowhere near sufficient to tackle housing affordability for all. It is true that research shows evidence that new market-rate supply helps mediate rent increases at the regional level. However, even the rosiest projections of new market-rate supply estimate very little short-term rent relief for lower-income renters, while at worst, new high-end supply may result in rent increases for lower-income renters nearby.” (Damiano, 2025, p. 128).
If the impacts of private market production on housing prices are modest (Freemark, 2023; Been, et al, 2025), substantial increases of housing supply would be necessary to make prices affordable to lower and middle-income households. There is no suggestion that the private market is capable of producing units at such a scale. This inability is primarily due to time considerations, limits to filtering, and the inherent interest of developers to maintain land values. Further, there are many other drivers of housing affordability that are outside the purview of planning controls and private market production as I will discuss in Section 2.
With the housing affordability crisis being urgent and present, the slowness of private market housing production following reforms becomes a concern— especially as filtering takes further time beyond the construction of new units to increase the supply of lower rent units. Freemark (2019) shows that substantial private housing production was largely absent five or more years after upzoning along transit lines in Chicago. Similarly, though modest long-term effects on housing production are observable across many studies, few find immediate, short-term increases following reforms (Freemark, 2023). We can anecdotally observe these findings here in Iowa City. Following zoning reforms in 2023 to allow duplexes, ADUs, and apartments across more contexts, permitting of new units still lags behind historical trends per the Neighborhood and Development Services 2024 Annual Report. In fact, Iowa City had zero permitted multifamily units and lost more duplexes to single-family conversions than it gained in new duplex production for the year of 2024. Helm and Murray (2025) explains that feasibility (regulatory and otherwise) of development alone is not responsible for housing production, but also the timing of development in regard to profit.
Not only is the response of the private market to zoning reform often sluggish, it may not come at all. As reviewed in Freemark (2023), only 5.1% of upzoned parcels in Portland, OR received housing production after 15 years (Dong, 2021) and a similar analysis of upzonings in Brisbane, Australia showed most development capacity went unused after more than 20 years (Limb & Murray, 2022). Modest, slow increases of supply likely inhibits the filtering of units to low income households (Spader, 2025), the only means by which the private market can supply affordable units without intervention.
In the few examples of true supply shocks from private development (a sudden increase in housing units that substantially lowers prices), there is no indication that housing security or true affordability improved. The perennial YIMBY and Abundance favorite Austin, TX experienced a private development boom in the late 2010s to early 2020s. In recent years, rent price growth has fallen.
See! The basic laws of supply demand hold true! Yet, as we learned above, demand-side factors (Helm & Murray, 2025) and submarket effects (Damiano, 2025) are being masked by measures of median rent improvements. Notably, the portion of rent-burdened households (those who spend more than 30% of their income) worsened during the same period and prices remain leagues above pre-boom levels (KUT News). There is no indication that Austin’s supply shock is replicable in other cities, or attributable to reform of planning controls. Powered by a tech industry boom, Austin was the fastest growing city in the US in the late 2010s and early 2020s; however, growth and demand have started to subside in recent years. More research is needed to understand to what degree this demand-side growth contributed to the city’s impressive building spree. Meanwhile, the availability of peripheral developable land for suburban sprawl continues to be an alternative explanation (Rodriguez-Pose & Storper, 2020).
Supply shocks, in addition to being few, do not seem to be sustained or long-term. To revisit another YIMBY favorite, Minneapolis’ 2010s apartment construction frenzy sputtered out following the COVID-19 pandemic, and (like Austin) rent-burdenedness still proliferates (Damiano, 2025). Minneapolis’ permitting numbers seem to be in decline.
Such a dynamic is observable in Iowa City’s waning multifamily construction boom in the Riverfront Crossings district (RFC) and purpose-built student housing. Following zoning reforms made in the RFC 2014 plan, several apartment projects were permitted per year until the early 2020s. COVID-19, interest rates, and concerns of overbuilding squashed high-profile projects (including two high-rises) and 2024, as mentioned above, saw zero multifamily units permitted. These examples are instructive that private housing development is likely sensitive to overbuilding concerns and resistant to inducing the long-term shocks necessary to improve affordability broadly.
The lack of empirical support for private development improving housing security or rent-burdenedness has led the arguments of reform advocates to uncomfortable places. Glaeser and Gyourko (2002) attempts to frame housing security as a poverty issue, not a housing one requiring policy intervention. Worse yet— in a book dedicated to informing federal housing policy— Glaeser and Gyourko (2008) argues that housing affordability should not be measured by whether a typical wage earner can afford rents (i.e. rent-burdenedness) but rather how close market prices are to the construction cost of producing a unit. If we interpret Glaeser and Gyourko directly, are they suggesting that a housing market could be “healthy” even if a sizable portion of residents cannot afford a unit at its production cost? Such exhibits a clear ideological urge to divorce our understanding of the housing market from the fundamental human need for shelter that housing is supposed to serve.
The academic consensus that stimulation of private development is insufficient to meaningfully address housing affordability most directly contradicts the notions of the YIMBY movement and popular justifications for zoning reforms. As I will discuss in Section 3, zoning reforms are still worthwhile policy objectives. Thus, the framing of “supply realism” within Damiano (2025) becomes pertinent as policyholders need to be honest about the limits of reforms, as negative outcomes may go unmitigated. Section 2 will examine these overlooked negative outcomes and the potential consequences of a singular focus on reform of planning controls.
Thank you for reading. I hope this work demonstrates that housing markets are more complicated than current popular discourse indicates and that it is not “bad economics” to question the free market ideology underlying YIMBYism and pop-urbanism. I promise to work dutifully to ensure Section 2 is posted (eventually).
REFERENCES
Academic Sources
(In order of first appearance)
Moran, C (2022). The Death of “Econ 101”. Current Affairs.https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/10/the-death-of-econ-101
Yonah Freemark (2025) What Is a Housing Shortage?, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 64-74, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2334019
Whitney Airgood-Obrycki & Daniel McCue (2025) The Housing Shortage Is Still Out There, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 75-79, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2334023
Been, V., Ellen, I. G., & O’Regan, K. (2019). Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability. Housing Policy Debate, 29(1), 25–40. https://doi-org/10.1080/10511482.2018.1476899
Anthony Damiano (2025) Supply Skepticism or Supply Realism?, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 124-130, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2418059
Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O’Regan (2025) Supply Skepticism Revisited, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 96-113, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2418044
Tim Helm & Cameron K. Murray (2025) Supply Skepticism Needs Economic Theory, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 114-117, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2418052
Greenaway-McGrevy, Ryan and Phillips, Peter C. B., The impact of upzoning on housing construction in Auckland ( 2023). Journal of Urban Economics, 136, 103555. DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2023.103555. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4560296
Freemark, Y. (2023). Zoning Change: Upzonings, Downzonings, and Their Impacts on Residential Construction, Housing Costs, and Neighborhood Demographics. Journal of Planning Literature, 38(4), 548-570. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/10.1177/08854122231166961 (Original work published 2023)
Anagol, Santosh, Ferreira, Fernando, & Rexer, Jonah. (2022). Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working paper 29440
Buechler, Simon, & Lutz, Elena. (2021). The local effects of relaxing land use regulation on housing supply and rents. MIT Center for Real Estate Research Paper 21/18
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Damiano, A., & Frenier, C. (2020). Build baby build? Housing submarkets and the effects of new construction on existing rents. Center for Urban and Regional Affairs Working Paper, University of Minnesota.
Kuhlmann, D. (2021). Upzoning and Single-Family Housing Prices: A (Very) Early Analysis of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(3), 383–395. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/10.1080/01944363.2020.1852101
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Images and Figures
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